silent surburban girl releasing her voice, not yet knowing what all she wants to say about her life and the things that make it spin. do you have to be 18 to be here? you'll know when i know.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

the one where i'm not all snarky and cute...

on my refrigerator, tucked under a photo of my sons and an irrelavant chinese fortune cookie prediction, is a post-it note with the scribbled writing from my husband's hand across it.

"share thoughts and feeling about things. be open and intimate with her."

he got out of bed late one night, right in the middle of my attempts to actually get him to be open and intimate with me - to actually share his thoughts and feelings - to write it. i didn't see it until the next morning. breaking the pact he was apparently making with himself by writing this note, he wouldn't tell me what he'd done by leaving the room and our attempted conversation to pad down to the kitchen, dig around in a drawer for pen and paper.

when i did see this post-it the next morning, amidst the chaos of getting kids ready for school, after he'd already left for the day, i broke down in tears. pouring cereal, double-checking backpacks, silently distracting myself as the boys gave me the quiet look of wonder that to me says 'what's that crazy lady crying about now?'

i asked him about it later. why write it? i wondered. why not just do it?

it's something i need to do, he answered.

end of coversation.

my heart broke a little bit. as humans, as spouses or people who love one another, don't we just simply have this in our nature? we want to feel, to connect to emotionally join with another person, right? don't tell me it's an instinctual man/woman difference. i tire of - and frankly, hate - that arguement. in my relationships, be it with a friend or someone i've bared my life to emotionally or physically, past and present, i've never required a 'to do' reminder.

this note is dated april 2, 2006. today is october 12. plenty of time to put into practice, eh?

you'd think.

it hasn't been the reminder he intended it to be.

it remains on the refrigerator. i hate it there, to be honest. i have cried about it. laughed about it. been snarky about it. demanded it's removal. attached it front and center for all who enter our home to see.

i refuse to be the one who removes it permanently. petty, perhaps.

whatever.

i see it every day. hell...i do it every day! i'm waiting. it waits with me.

is he awful to be around? no.is my life a living hell? absolutely not.am i satisified with the place i've made for myself? i suppose so.could i have had it a lot worse? damn sure of it.

and does he try? i suppose, to be honest and to give him the chance to defend himself without knowing he needs it, yes. he tries as well as i assume he can. but really, things are the same as they were the night he got up and wrote this note.

so really, i guess, what i'm saying is don't taunt me with something like that and then forget it.

it's our 12th anniversary sunday. by most standards, we're old pros at this marriage dance. i've been known to shake my head sadly when learning of marriages that decompose in little more than a year - or less. by all accounts, things have happened in our marriage that should have made us one of the statistics used to mark failure. the last two years have not been the model i'd want to market. i've not been the best wife i probably could have been.

could be.

i don't write this to simply lay blame at his feet for whatever nasty notion i get it my head or heart. hopefully you won't read it as such; however, i can't control if that's how you read it. we're all different people. putting two different people together in a marriage, who probably don't know what the hell they're doing in the first place (raising my hand here in acknowledgement), is not a game you play expecting one or the other to win. you're both supposed to.

sometimes, though, i think you have to review the rules. maybe that's all i'm doing.

5 Comments:

good post and it is not too much to ask for him to open up to you. I long for true intimacy as I have openly said on my blog. As a man I am called wierd because of it, but it is necessary.Huggggggggg and hope the weekend brings some kind of joy.

I saw a movie not too long ago where a couple had an agreement posted on the fridge door . He promises to share his feelings and she promises to have sex once a week. I claim no insight to offer just a wish that you find the depth of intamcy you crave and need fronm the one you love

I don't really have anything insightful to say. I'm pulling for you, and I hope things get better.

I tend to make it my policy in life to accept people as they are and not make demands on them, which is a great way of making me feel like I'm not worth much if I can't ever ask anyone to do anything for me. So if I were in your shoes, I'm sure I'd just say to myself, "Well, that's how he is. I'll just have to accept that my emotional needs won't be met. Who am I to try to change him?" I think your outlook is much healthier, although no happier. I wish you luck.

i'm always on the lookout for the depth of connection we deserve to have, chipping away at the pieces of granite that sometimes get put up in our defenses. thank you all for your comments and notes.

i knew when i said 'yes' to this man that what i have today would not be a surprise. he's the well trained prodigy of people who don't communicate well. me? i come from a line of yellers, so i try to steer clear of that best i can. somewhere in the middle is where we meet. sometimes we talk. sometimes we stew. many times we accept defeat. we just have to find the means of crossing over the hazards to get to where we want to be.

he's who he is. i'm who i am (very much as you described yourself, kelly). we're not unhappy. we're two people who've put up with a lot in 12 years. the assumption is there's going to be more. and that's not so bad if there's hope that one day you just 'get it.'